Telegram Premium, which was announced earlier this month and allows users access to additional features for $4.99 per month, has now launched (via TechCrunch). All of the enhancements are detailed in a blog post on Telegram’s website, with some of the more notable highlights including speedier downloads and a 4GB maximum file upload capacity (rather than the standard 2GB).
Premium subscribers will also have access to double the amount of data that normal users have access to. Instead of being able to join up to 500 channels, subscribers are limited to 1,000. Subscribers can now create 20 chat folders with 200 talks each, save up to 10 stickers, pin up to 10 chats, and add a total of four accounts to Telegram instead of the previous three. Premium users also get longer bios that include a link.
Access to a library of Premium stickers with more annoying full-screen animations, special emoji reactions, and dynamic profile images are among the other benefits (sort of like the ones you see on Steam). In case you don’t have headphones, there’s also text conversion for voice communications, as well as chat administration features that let you alter your default chat folder. Oh, and Premium subscribers get rid of sponsored messages in public channels.
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov hasn’t changed his mind about the platform’s freemium tier since he initially mentioned it in 2020. Durov confirmed last week, in keeping with past statements, that free features will remain free, and that new features will have no impact on the Telegram experience for non-subscribers. This implies that free Telegram users should be able to view and download larger files provided by subscribers, as well as download the paid reactions or emojis they utilize.
Durov also pledged that Telegram would continue to create services for free users, a promise that the company looks to be keeping so far. The latest Telegram update adds a few platform-specific improvements and displays verified badges in chats (rather than just profiles, search results, or chat lists). It also allows public groups to enable join requests and displays verified badges in chats (rather than just profiles, search results, or chat lists).
Telegram Premium, on the other hand, comes with a variety of features, many of which will likely appeal to Telegram’s — now 700 million strong — most active users. The majority of Premium’s benefits, in my opinion, build on Telegram’s existing capabilities. The new tier doesn’t lock functions behind a paywall that should’ve been free to begin with (similar to what Twitter did with its “undo” button).
